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REV. N. L. FROTHINGHAM'S 



SERMON 



AFTER THE DEATH OF 



J. G. STEVENSON, M. D 



THE HELP OF GOD UNDER THE LOSS OF FAITHFUL MEN. 



SERMON 



PREACHED TO THE FIRST CHURCH, 



AFTER THE DEATH OF 



J. G. STEVENSON, M. D. 




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BY N. L. FROTHINGHAM, 



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BOSTON, 

PRINTED BY ISAAC R. BUTTS. 

1835. 



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SERMON. 



PSALM XII, 1. 

HELP, LORD J FOR THE FAITHFUL FAIL FROM AMONG THE CHILDREN 

OF MEN. 

The Psalmist uttered this supplication and appeal 
to heaven, on account of the evil times on which he 
had fallen, and the bad men who surrounded him. 
The world seemed to him to be degenerate ; the 
ancient fidelity to be declining ; and society to be 
losing its brightest ornaments by having its members 
lose their integrity. He saw corruption spreading 
itself abroad, the ranks of the true-hearted grown 
thinner and fainter, "the wicked walking on every 
side, and the vilest men exalted;" and he cried, 
"help, Lord!" 

But it is not only by the declensions of sin, by 
the abounding of deceit and oppression, and the 
decay of honor and charity, that " the faithful fail 
from among the children of men." They are taken 
away in the midst of all that they were doing for 
the joy of their friends and the benefit of the society 



they lived in. They fail by reason of death. There 
was no other defection, to which they seemed ca- 
pable of yielding ; so fixed were they in their princi- 
ples, so steady in their dutiful work. But this 
comes in, and will not be refused. It breaks off 
the purposes that were the most righteously set ; it 
turns aside the course that was the most usefully 
directed. The high heart, and the strong intellect, 
and the skilful hand, it brings down under its do- 
minion and into its dust. And then, when the 
community misses them from the number of its sons ; 
and private affection, bending over their memories, 
says, there may be others as worthy as they to fill their 
place in the public eye, but who is there to supply it 
to mine ? — when they, who had never disappointed 
a hope nor broken a promise before, have now de- 
ceived our expectation, and turned false, in the only 
w r ay they could be false, — to the assurances they 
had inspired us with ; — when friends and compan- 
ions thus cease to have any interest in us longer, 
and well-tried helpers withdraw their aid ; — then 
do we not look above every inferior assistance, and 
mistrust any deliverance that is less than almighty, 
and cry, " help, Lord ?" We feel as if no one can 
be truly called faithful, but He, who never dies. 
We ask in our grief, why we should give that vain 
title to those who " fail from among the children of 
men ;" — who cannot fulfil the intentions on which 
we relied ; — who cannot keep their word, nor keep 
themselves ; but go away into the hollow ground, 
with their pledges unredeemed, leaving nothing with 



us but the images of a sorrowful but precious re- 
membrance. Call God true, we say with the 
apostle, and every man faithless ; — for you cannot 
put your trust in so uncertain a being. There is no 
help in him. He forsakes you ; — for he cannot stay 
when he is summoned. He forgets you; — at least in 
the dreary obliviousness of the grave. His word is 
air, and his arm is dust, and his life is a shadow, 
and his memory is a dream. Cease from him. His 
" breath is in his nostrils, and wherein is he to be 
accounted of?" " Help, Lord ! " 

But we should bear in mind, at the same time, that 
this divine Power would not have us call upon him 
in a temper of weariness or complaint at what is 
around us. He would not have us even lean upon 
him out of a dejected and repining heart; — as if 
there were nothing here to bear reposing on, to 
deserve affection, or reward expectancy ; as if the 
world were all a waste, because death sets his foot 
upon its highest and lowest places. Cod would not 
be honored by having his creatures slighted of, nor 
can he be honored by dissatisfaction with the pres- 
ent orders of his Providence. We cannot suppose 
it to be his pleasure, that we should fly to him, 
driven by disgust or terror or any passionateness, 
but rather that we should make him our constant 
stay. We should confide in him with the spirit of 
filial attachment, and not make Him a mere refuge 
and last resource from the very dispensations that 
He has appointed. We should confide in him, not 
as if all else were vanity, but as if He sent nothing 



to be in vain ; — not considering others to be 
nothing, but only that He is high over them all. I 
am afraid that we are apt to fall into an error on 
this point, and to imagine that we are trusting the 
Almighty, when w r e are only mistrusting the present 
scene, the companions he has given us, the events 
that betide us, the world he has placed us in. The 
Psalmist in the passage before us, smarting under 
the sense of private injuries, might easily have over- 
stated the wickedness of his generation ; and we 
ourselves, when disappointed and bereft and strick- 
en, dwell with the natural exaggerations of grief 
upon human fragility and the world's emptiness and 
the small number of the well-deserving that has now 
been made smaller still. And then, if we invoke 
aid from the great source of strength, the petition 
will be in danger of having more in it of our personal 
misery and the despair of earthly good, than of grate- 
ful assurance in the mercifulness that we implore. 

I invite you to follow me through a simple train 
of thought, such as is suggested to us by the very 
language of the text. There are the faithful ; and 
they fail ; and we require help. 

1. There are the faithful; — many of them ; — 
some very near to us and well known, and multi- 
tudes whom it is for others to rejoice in, if not for 
us. The names of some are brought out from the 
retired circle which they had secretly brightened 
and silently blest, only by the tidings of their loss 
and the expressions of a general sympathy; — while 
others did not need the rumor of a melancholy 



event to publish their worth to strangers, nor the 
pain of separation to remind their friends of the 
love and honor in which that worth was held. 
There are the faithful, — a constant and long suc- 
cession of them ; not indeed the unerring, not 
indeed the faultless ; — for them you must go out 
of the world; — but those whom the scripture goes 
so far as to call " the perfect," and " the upright." 
Question them, and their answers will be according 
to truth. Agree with them, and their dealings will 
be according to righteousness. Merciful men, whose 
souls are not so taken up with their own interests 
as to be careless of their neighbor's ; just men, whose 
integrity is neither to be stolen nor bribed nor 
wrested from them ; honorable men, who have not 
been known to betray a trust, or evade an obliga- 
tion. They are quickened by good affections while 
they are ruled by principles ; and therefore their 
lives exhibit that most difficult of attainments, — con- 
sistency. They are ready to all the work for which 
God has made them able. They are not anxious to 
spare themselves in the service of their times and 
their kind ; while every nearer claim is sacredly ful- 
filled. You may take to your confidence the inhe- 
ritors of so noble a nature. You may contemplate for 
your own improvement such specimens of your race. 
You are safe with them. You need not fear for their 
probity or their good will. Their hearts will not 
alter nor their endeavors abate, till the great change 
strikes them ; and even that, though it breaks the 
wheel at the cistern of life, and cuts abruptly short 



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their intercourse with surrounding things, cannot 
make them different from what they were before. 
It has no power over their characters, whatever 
change it may have wrought upon the circumstances 
of their condition, and though it has separated them 
so absolutely from all mortal ties. It cannot reverse 
what they have been. It cannot efface what they 
have done from the book of God's remembrance, 
or our own. It cannot put upon them any dis- 
honor. Let it come then when it must, and trans- 
late them — for that is all it can — to the higher 
destinies of an activity that shall never cease. 

2. And it will come. They " fail from among 
the children of men." In youth often ; in the midst 
of their days often ; inevitably at a later period, if 
they are detained to see it. And we can bear this ; 
for the grave neither sullies nor hides them, as they 
lie down in it. The seal is now set upon their fidel- 
ity and the crown upon their immortal hopes. 

But they may die young ! Yes. In the fulness 
of their ability ! Yes. When the fruits of their en- 
deavors were just gathering ripely in ! We must 
admit it. At the very moment when the world had 
the most to attract, and friends had the most to lose ! 
It is indeed so. And you will tell me that this is as 
mysterious to contemplate, as it is afflicting to bear. 
Mysterious we may certainly call it ; for what less 
must appear, to such limited creatures as we, all the 
designs of the Infinite God? — But hear a parable. 
An old man and a youth stood musing upon the 
doom of an early death many ages ago, before the 



light of the glorious gospel rose upon the nations- 
I can see them now. No two other such forms 
had ever been presented to the admiration of man- 
kind. They stood together by the rivers of Egypt 
and upon the plains of the East, each of them a 
wanderer from his own peculiar land. The elder 
had the garb of a prophet. He seemed marked out 
to be the primeval instructer of his kind. He w T as 
full of years already ; and his words fell from him 
in praise of long life, and a promise of it to the good, 
and in lamentation for those who were not permitted 
to live out, as he termed it, all their days. He dis- 
coursed largely on it as a motive to wisdom and 
goodness, that so one would continue longer upon the 
earth. He appeared to measure in some degree 
the rewards of virtue, by calculations in time and 
space. I dare not call it a mistake in that divine 
old man ; for I look upon him as preparing the way 
for the confirmation of an endless existence. His 
frozen notion of long life floated out and melted in 
the great idea of life forevermore. — The young man 
was near and gazed upon the patriarch. His looks 
were radiant with intelligence and resolution. — He 
was soldier and sage, moralist and bard, in the same 
person. Among the many things that he said in re- 
ply to his venerable companion was this, " they 
whom the gods love die young." 

The two persons now described represent the op- 
posite spirits of the Hebrew and the Grecian belief. 
I will not say which approaches the most nearly to the 
Christian faith ; but only this, that if the more an- 
2 



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cient word prepared the way for the doctrine of a 
future life, the later one seems to have gained an 
instinct of that precious truth. They met again, 
towards the time of the Saviour's coming, when 
the Hebrew learning and the Grecian culture were 
found together at Alexandria ; and they had then 
agreed to express this beautiful sentiment, from the 
mouth of a Jew and in the language of Plato : 
" though the righteous be soon overtaken with death, 
yet shall he be at rest. Wisdom is the gray hair 
unto men, and an unspotted life is old age. Being 
made perfect in a short time, he fulfilled a long time. 
The righteous that is dead shall condemn the ungodly 
which are living, and youth that is soon perfected 
the many years of the wicked.' 5 * 

The faithful fail from among the children of men. 
So far are they from being spared for their faithful- 
ness, that the natural regrets and fears of human 
hearts are ever ready to complain that such are the 
most liable to be taken. But neither is this the case 
any more than the contrary. The desolator makes 
no distinctions. He goes where he is sent ; and 
his company is impartially collected from every grade 
of character and every period of days. He is a 
solemn visitant. Even when he comes to those 
whom he could not much longer pass by ; or to 
those who were continued here too little while to 
leave any record of themselves behind ; or to those 
who have left no very good one, — passing away 

* Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 7, 9, 13, 16. 



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without much having been accomplished for their 
own improvement or others' good ; — under any cir- 
cumstances, he wears a solemn aspect. He brings 
with him painful remembrances and anxious appre- 
hensions. He crowds the heart with melancholy 
thoughts of our frailty and of our end. What shall 
we say, then, when the widely known, the emi- 
nently endowed, the usefully employed, the dearly 
prized, are swept away from the sphere of their du- 
ties and the objects of their regard ? We must feel 
that we have then peculiar need of being sustained 
and comforted. 

3. And who shall supply this necessity ? Friends 
will approach with their sympathy, and that may do 
something to sooth us. The recollection of their 
dispositions and deeds will rise up, and that will do 
something to encourage us. The common cares of 
life and the claims of the living will interpose with 
their merciful distractions. The necessity of sub- 
mission to what cannot be reversed may first sub- 
due and then tranquillize the soul. But what are 
these all, if the blessed sanctions of religion are not 
brought in to blend with the expressions of human 
friendship, with the tribute to the departed, with 
the calls of dutv and with the decrees of fate ? 
What are they all, if there be no promise beyond 
mortality, and no aid from beyond the stars ? " Help, 
Lord." 

If you had lost the fulness that you once had of 
this world's goods, you might hope to win it back 



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again by a diligent hand and a more prosperous for- 
tune, or you might learn lo account the portion that 
is left to be wealth enough. If you had lost your 
health, you might look to recover it by the skill of 
the physician and patient remedies. If you had lost 
some of the pleasures that were very valuable to 
you among the every-day solaces of life, you might 
open new sources in the place of those that were 
dry, or take an increased interest in those that are 
yet left. If you had lost your courage, and spirits, 
and heart's content, you might repair them among 
the diversions of society, or by a change of pursuits 
or an interval of repose. .But when death strikes 
in upon the circle of our attachments, ordinary con- 
solations are out of place and ordinary succor is un- 
availing. The sorrow that does not spring forth 
from the ground must have more than earthly appli- 
ances to meet it. Help, Lord ; with the doctrine of 
thy word, with the influences of thy spirit, with the 
angel of thy consolations ! Clear away our doubtful- 
ness, and banish our dread, give patience, give forti- 
tude, give peace ! 

The minds of my hearers will have gone before 
me in giving the reason for the selection of this 
morning's text. A " faithful" man has ceased from 
among us ; a fellow-worshipper with you from his 
boyish days ; one who had the welfare of our society 
warmly at heart, and whose substantial worth would 
have enriched the communion of any church in the 
world. His position before the public makes it not 



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improper thus to allude to him publicly. And yet 
I should be afraid to pronounce any set eulogy, and 
ashamed to pronounce any exaggerated one, of so 
sincere and unpretending a man, who would 

" Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame." 

I have described him already, and meant to do so, 
in what has been said of the " faithful ;" — alas, 
that he too has failed so soon from among the chil- 
dren of men ! 

Belonging to a profession that is happy beyond 
every other in the personal regards of those among 
whom it is exercised, — that demands more than any 
other the highest exercises of prudence, self-posses- 
sion, a conscientious diligence, and entire trust-wor- 
thiness, he was wanting in nothing to the claims of an 
intelligent community or to the desires of his friends. 
His understanding was of a firm and elevated order ; 
and his feelings, though remarkably restrained and 
guarded in all their visible expressions, were expan- 
sive enough to hold all the objects to which it was 
possible for him to do good. The cares of his labori- 
ous and responsible calling, though devotedly assum- 
ed, did not withdraw him from the liberal pursuits 
of a scholar ; and what was more important, did not 
prevent him from entering with ardor into all the 
projects which he thought wise for the general im- 
provement. He was public spirited. He showed 
himself a great friend to the poor, and was constant- 



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ly seeking* out something for their relief and moral 
advancement. He was soberly active in the move- 
ment for temperance. He was distinguished by the 
interest he took in the cause of popular education. 
Quietly busy, modestly useful, enterprising but never 
extravagant, he was willing to spend all the stores 
of his rich and active mind in the service of his gen- 
eration ; — a service, where they who received it 
should be the humblest individuals, and he who 
rendered it should be unknown. He was such an 
enemy of display and ostentation, that to be and 
not to seem, might pass for the motto of his life. 

It were not to be excused, if I omitted to say that 
he was a devout man ; a Christian, from inquiry and 
conviction and the action of his own thoughts and a 
deep-seated reverence and affectionateness for what 
is divine. He did not trifle with sacred things in his 
familiar talk, nor slight them among his researches, 
nor question them with an unbecoming lightness, 
nor censure them with a hasty judgment. He was 
none of those shallow reasoners, who start petty ob- 
jections against everlasting truths ; and he was 
equally far from the subservient following of any hu- 
man authority. He reflected within himself and 
decided for himself, and the result was religiousness. 

It may be permitted to say these things of him in 
this house of our devotions, which he frequented in 
the spirit of faith and worship and not for form's sake, 
and where we shall see his face no more. He is 
beyond the hearing of the words that would now do 



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him respect, and high out of the reach of the mourn- 
ers that bewail him. He has gone to render his hom- 
age in a heavenly temple and with holier compan- 
ions, and where there is no more distress. 

" The loss of a finished man," it was once said, 
" is not easily supplied." Let not the example of 
a " faithful" one be easily forgotten. 






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